


love's lost prelude

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/F, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Music, Piano, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14709531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Tenko sits at Kaede's old piano and thinks about how Himiko will never love her back.





	love's lost prelude

Tenko stares at the keys of Kaede’s piano, feeling the weight of her ghost with every note; she wishes that the Ultimate Pianist were still alive to teach her how to play. For now, she just feels like she’s trespassing in a place that isn’t hers, adopting a talent that makes her feel disconnected from her body.

But that’s good. She wants to dissociate her mind from the sad reality of who she is; or rather, who she is in relation to who she loves. There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian, in fact she’s proud of it, but falling in love with a girl whose sexuality is undetermined and who seems to have no romantic interest in her? That hurts.

If only she _were_ Kaede. Kaede could compliment all the girls, smile at them sweetly, and she didn’t feel like she was doing anything wrong; Tenko, on the other hand, suffers through the re-emergence of internalised homophobia, telling herself that she’ll never find love, she’ll never be happy.

Does she even deserve to be happy?

When she pictures Himiko’s face in her mind, her heart melts. As cliché as it feels, a day wherein she sees Himiko can’t possibly be all bad. She wishes that she could hold her love interest and kiss her softly, protect her from the killing game and from anyone who wishes to harm her – but she’s _scared._ Tenko can look in the face of death and be satisfied, but she feels true fear when she thinks about Himiko hating her.

Is she coming on too strong? Does Himiko hate her more and more with each word she says?

It’s not like this is just a simple crush – no, Tenko feels like this is genuinely, beautifully, love. The magic that surrounds Himiko takes firm hold of her heart, and she wants to exist on a non-mortal plane, standing side by side with her ideal girlfriend; she wants to take her on dates and buy her flowers and cook her breakfast on each lazy, sunshine-ridden morning.

But Himiko doesn’t want that. Tenko aches with the sadness that’s all too familiar to her – she remembers Himiko inquiring about her sexuality, and she didn’t seem bothered at the time, but thinking back, Tenko worries that Himiko was just trying to be polite. What if she’s been raised religious? What if she’s been taught to hate gay people?

It seems stupid to contemplate every possibility, but she knows that her mind won’t rest when she’s alone this way. That’s why she’d trudged her way to Kaede’s talent lab an hour ago, hoping that she could find comfort within the keys, the way Kaede had encouraged them all to do before she got dragged away and…

Angrily, Tenko hits the piano with so much force that a violent discord rages through the room, bouncing off each wall and coming back to stab her in the chest with her own emotions. The piano doesn’t sound as sweet as she imagines it did when Kaede played it, but she manages to figure out some chords.

Suddenly, unconsciously, she’s singing about Himiko.

 _‘I don't wanna be your boyfriend,_  
_I only wanna be your, wanna be your_  
_night-time dream,_  
_day-time seamlessly,_  
_achingly,_  
_wondering when you became like me,_  
_endlessly,_  
_stuck inside reality_  
_I'm not the partner you must need;_  
_and I_  
_only wanna be your girlfriend_  
_I wish you saw me like a guy,_  
_I never wanted anyone's love_  
_I only wanted you and I, you and I.’_

The music echoes through the reality of her life, piercing the back of her neck with goose-bumps as she realises exactly the situation she’s in, and she hates herself for it. Every single one of them is conflicted; for fuck’s sake…they’ve all been told to kill each other! In the past few days, they’ve witnessed two brutal deaths, and here she is, hung up on the fact that she’s never going to be loved.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? With death looming in her future, a grand possibility, the thought of dying alone scares her – when she thought about dying in the past, she always imagined being eighty years old, but here she stands, nineteen, alone, running on borrowed time.

All she has now is the piano, but even that is missing a pianist. Simple, inanimate objects in this horrific academy represent the tearing apart of hope; no longer will Kaede play Chopin, and they’ll all never get to hear her.

Tenko wants to be optimistic. Damn it, she’d told herself right at the beginning that Kaede had the right idea with trying to get everyone to be positive, but she went behind their backs and dropped a shotput ball on Rantaro’s head, and then everything went to hell. Hell…where Tenko’s parents have always told her she’ll end up.

Perhaps she’s saving Himiko by having her love be achingly unrequited. It could make her a target, not just in here, but in the outside world – Tenko would never forgive herself if she got Himiko killed. No, she steels herself, and reminds her useless mind that the world doesn’t revolve around her.

The piano needs to collect dust, and Tenko needs to move on from here.

Leaving the room, she tries to run towards her bedroom, hoping that she doesn’t run into anyone on the way. But luck is never on her side – the universe has struck her down many times before, and bumping into Himiko just outside the sanctuary of her bedroom seems like the most bittersweet way to end a day dripping with venomous sadness.

“Tenko,” Himiko says, “what are you doing? Me and Angie are practicing for a magic show and I needed some help lifting some heavy boxes.”

“O-Oh,” Tenko replies, remembering how she’ll only be doing Himiko a favour if she keeps her feelings secret; but it’s too hard to be around her and not want to love her with her whole being, “I’m a little tired, Himi. Maybe you could ask Gonta?”

“N-Nyeh, a-alright. But I don’t think he’s as strong as you.”

“I’m not strong, Himi. You’re much stronger. Go…be with Angie and Gonta. Your magic show is sure to bring us the strength we need to get out of here!”

“Yeah,” Himiko says, “lets get out of here together.”

Tenko, her eyes quickly filling with tears, shuts her bedroom door behind her and cries.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this song, and I thought I wanted to immortalise it, so I wrote this fic based on it! Shoutout to my fellow lesbians!
> 
> Please comment on this fic if you liked it!


End file.
